A project of the Center for Community Change

racial profiling

State and Local Roundup

Posted by Rachel L. on April 3, 2009

states

CA: Group: Detained Immigrants Kept in Squalid Basement: Immigrants held by the federal government are being detained in a squalid basement where conditions are foul-smelling and dirty, a civil rights group said in a lawsuit.

WA: Seattle Raid Raises Questions About Shift in Enforcement: The disclosure Wednesday that illegal immigrants in Seattle were given permission to work in the country has triggered alarms on Capitol Hill that the Obama administration is making a fundamental shift in the enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws.

NM: Roswell Hispanics Claim Police Racial Profiling: Roswell residents’ complaints about racial profiling of Hispanics by police officers have prompted a state advocacy group to request intervention from the U.S. Justice Department and the state attorney general’s office.

GA: Senate Bill Links Road Money to Immigration Status: Local governments that don’t check to make sure they are not hiring illegal immigrants could lose state money for building roads, under legislation that passed the Senate on Wednesday.

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ACTION: Justice for Joe – What do you want to see?

Posted by Rachel L. on April 1, 2009

We all remember America’s favorite sheriff, Mr. Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona. How could we forget the time he marched hundreds of inmates through the streets in chains to a tent city surrounded by electric fences? Or the time he said he was “honored” to be compared to the KKK? Or his many (MANY) accusations of racial profiling?

Lots of  you helped by petitioning the Department of Justice to investigate good old Joe and we need your help again. Tomorrow there will be a hearing in Congress to investigate the violations of civil rights under 287(g) (the law that allows Joe and others to locally enforce immigration laws). We want to know – what do you want to ask folks like Sheriff Joe?

20090331askjoeWhat issues do you think are most important for Members of Congress to investigate at the hearing? Is it ending racial profiling? Is it finding the best ways to ensure community safety?

Now is your chance to speak up. Visit http://americasvoiceonline.org/FIRMtoCongress to submit your questions and tell Members of Congress what you think the priority of the investigation should be.

Our partners at America’s Voice will be delivering your suggestions directly to Congress – so make your voice heard! This hearing is an important first step towards leaving behind the Bush enforcement-only era and pushing towards comprehensive immigration reform.

Visit http://americasvoiceonline.org/FIRMtoCongress to make sure Members of Congress are on the right track!

And be sure to tune into the hearing – you can watch live at http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/calendar.html – tomorrow, April 2nd at 10AM EST.

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When the Extreme Becomes Mainstream

Posted by Rachel L. on September 30, 2008

Last week, I mentioned a recent Pew Hispanic Center Study which found that 1 in 10 Latinos has been stopped and asked about their immigration status by police or other authorities.

While this is certainly the most shocking statistic to come out of the study, it is only the tip of the iceberg for Latinos living in this country.

From the Huffington post:

One in seven Latinos are reporting ethnic discrimination in finding or keeping a job and 10% said the same thing about housing. But the most stunning finding is that nearly one-in-ten Hispanic adults–native-born US citizens and immigrants alike–report that, in the past year, the police or other authorities have stopped them and asked them about their immigration status. One in ten Latinos were stopped and asked for “papers.” What can that statistic represent other than a gross abuse of power by federal and local authorities?

Vicious public denunciations of undocumented, brown-skinned immigrants — once limited to hard-core white supremacists and a handful of border-state extremists — are increasingly common among supposedly mainstream anti-immigration activists, media pundits, and politicians and are surely fueling the problems that Latinos are facing.

While their dehumanizing rhetoric typically stops short of openly sanctioning bloodshed, much of it implicitly encourages or even endorses violence by characterizing immigrants from Mexico and Central America as ‘invaders,’ ‘criminal aliens,’ and ‘cockroaches.’

The hate speech that is fueling the current anti-migrant fervor has somehow left the area of “hard core” or “extremist” thought and trickled into the mainstream, becoming pervasive on shows like Lou Dobbs Tonight or Bill O’Reilly and pushed by hate groups like FAIR.

We must stand up to the powers that want to dehumanize and entire portion of the population.

Living in fear of deportation and discrimination and worrying about your livelihood and safety is no way to live and it’s certainly not how Americans expect to live. In fact, it’s the sort of life that our forefathers sought to protect us from. Debate, discussion, and disagreement around the pressing immigration issue are natural, legitimate, and necessary. Hate, fear and vitriol rhetoric are not.

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